


Show Me

by masterwords



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Sad David Rossi, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 02:48:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28735998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterwords/pseuds/masterwords
Summary: As the sun crested the rocky cliffs and sank slowly into the deep blue horizon, he heard Aaron stirring upstairs.  He waited, listening to the old floor boards creaking under his partner's steady footsteps, the stairs groaning beneath his feet.  When he entered the sun porch, his hair a mess of salt and pepper chaos and a blanket pulled tight around his shoulders, Dave smiled.“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” Dave said, arching his back and standing up.  His legs screamed at him for a moment and he leaned side to side, stretching them out, realizing how very long it had been since he'd moved from that one spot.
Relationships: Aaron Hotchner/David Rossi
Comments: 6
Kudos: 22





	Show Me

**Author's Note:**

> I had this pretty image of aging Hotch & Rossi by the ocean in my mind and had to write it. They're the most beautiful. It's a little sad but so so dreamy.

It was late afternoon and the sun was painting the grey clouds buttery yellow and crisp orange behind the mist. Aaron was asleep, had been for hours, while Dave sat on the sun porch with the click click click of his typewriter. He'd taken his sabbatical in spring, a first for him, he generally preferred to write surrounded by the decaying sweet scent of maple leaves on the crisp autumn breeze. Something about it always laced his books with something dark and mysterious, something he otherwise didn't provide with his own voice. He was half done with his novel, or so he figured, but he never really knew exactly. At that moment, he was in the middle of a sentence when he was struck by a flash, a minuscule little thought that erupted into flame and suddenly a new book was presenting itself to him. This wasn't uncommon. He began furiously typing, clicking away at the keys with the knowledge that everything else he'd written on the page would be garbage, have to be re-typed, but he had to get the words out before they vanished. Maybe Garcia was right, maybe he should upgrade to a computer for his novels so he could just pop open a new document and not lose the old, but there was something about the way his fingers flew over the keys on a typewriter that just felt like writing a book. A computer felt like work, a typewriter was something altogether different – he could create terrible beauty there. He could use fascinating words to paint a world where serial killers took on life, he could paint back alleys and open fields and abandoned industrial warehouses in brilliant, striking detail – on a computer, he wrote up reports for case files and emails and used bland government approved signatures and adhered to strict guidelines about what sorts of words he could and couldn't use for legal reasons. Sure, he'd lost a day's work to his whim, but he could live with that. He'd just have Aaron sit and read it back to him in that scraggy baritone he affected when he was sick, his voice catching in his throat when it couldn't find the right vibrations, and it would breathe new life into the words on the pages that he hadn't expected. No, this was how it should be, this was right. He would listen to Aaron reading his words and he would type them up and lose himself in that voice, and it would become forever a part of his story. He finished blazing the new idea out onto the page and pulled it from the typewriter to admire it, typos and all. This would be framed, put on the wall of his den with all of the others – the seeds of his stories, how they all began. Each book began here before making its way to the top of the bestseller list. 

As the sun crested the rocky cliffs and sank slowly into the deep blue horizon, he heard Aaron stirring upstairs. He waited, listening to the old floor boards creaking under his partner's steady footsteps, the stairs groaning beneath his feet. When he entered the sun porch, his hair a mess of salt and pepper chaos and a blanket pulled tight around his shoulders, Dave smiled. 

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead,” Dave said, arching his back and standing up. His legs screamed at him for a moment and he leaned side to side, stretching them out, realizing how very long it had been since he'd moved from that one spot. 

“Hey,” was the response, crackling like the dying embers of a fire from Aaron's sore throat. “Tea. Want some?” His voice was raw, his throat was flint ready to spark, and he chose his words carefully, expending as little energy on them as he could. One word too many and the flint inside of him might ignite his throat in flame. Dave nodded and followed Aaron to the small kitchen at the back of the house, the kitchen that was nothing more than a small refrigerator, a gas stove and a few cupboards with a small table shoved into the corner that doubled as a place to eat and a counter top. Aaron filled the kettle with water and set it on the stove top like it was the most natural thing he'd ever done, swiftly igniting the burner and listening to it hiss to life for a moment. There were two stools pushed under the table and Aaron slid them out, seating himself atop one to await the screaming kettle. His legs felt weak, he shivered with fever, watched as Dave stood beside the stove top ready but he couldn't keep his legs under him so long, he had to sit. The blanket caught in a splinter of the wood, gauged with initials of people they would never meet, and he tugged at it until it came loose. He felt where it had frayed with his fingertips, smoothing out the wool softly until it all fell back into place. 

“You up for a walk down to the beach tonight?” Dave asked, pulling the screeching kettle from the flame and splashing boiling water into their mugs, watching the tea bags float to the surface to begin imparting their colors and flavors to the water below. He lost himself for a moment in the swirl of the pale greens and yellows that spun a web out from the edges of the herbs nestled in their gauzy bags, breathed the smell deep into his lungs. 

“Sure,” was Aaron's reply, a man of few words already but when he was sick, he became almost monosyllabic. Dave drizzled honey into Aaron's tea, swirled it around with a spoon and dropped the bag into the garbage before handing the steaming mug to his partner, watching the way his large hands swallowed the mug almost entirely. He slid his fingers through the handle, cupping the mug, feeling the warmth spread into his palms and up his arms. The blanket slid down off of his shoulders, revealing a well worn navy blue t-shirt with stretched hems and faded spots. Dave, without skipping a beat, slipped over to him and pulled the blanket back up, tucking it neatly in around his partner before taking his seat on the other stool. “How's the book?”

“It's coming along,” Dave replied, sipping his tea, burning his lips and the tip of his tongue. “I'm going to need your help later, if you're up to it.” Aaron nodded, he'd been anticipating this. He looked forward to it. Over the last few days, while Aaron slept off whatever crud he'd picked up, Dave had made his way upstairs and read to him – nothing coherent, just bits and pieces of what he'd written, as if he just needed to hear it come out of his own mouth to see if it made sense. To Aaron, it rarely made sense, it was out of context, out of order, but Dave had a way with words and he'd still find himself lost in whatever snippet of the story he was able to hear. Now it would be his turn to take the words directly from the page, to read them in his own voice, to make them his – he loved this part. This was why he chose to use a chunk of his vacation time every year coming along when Dave would write. It wasn't exciting, in fact he spent most of the time alone (or, this year, sick in bed) but for those rare moments when he got to take the words from the page and breathe them to life, he lived for it. The two men sipped their tea in the quiet, listening to the old bones of the house settling, the waves down below crashing against the great gray cliffs, the screech of the gulls overhead. After tea, Aaron shuffled back up to bed for another hour or so while Dave finished up his work for the day. He prepared his blank page for later, when he would have Aaron read him what he'd written, tidied up his chair and washed up all of his used dishes. Everything had a place, neatly put away for use the following day. He picked up the typewriter, a mangled mess of twisted metal in his arms, and hauled it into the main room, set it beside the small sofa where he'd sit and type later by the fire. Slipping into his shoes and jacket, he called upstairs to Aaron, asked if he was ready for their walk, heard the other man's feet hit the floor and begin moving about. He sat on the sofa and waited patiently until he saw the shadowy figure of his partner descend the stairs, bundled in a sweatshirt with a hood beneath a jacket and scarf. Dave looked ready for a breezy spring walk at sunset, Aaron looked ready for a midnight winter hike. 

“You sure you're feeling up for a walk?” Dave asked, standing now. Aaron nodded. 

“Need some air,” was his reply, and Dave nodded. They left the front door unlocked, as was customary out here where not another soul would be seen or heard for miles. Both men were of the same mind that if someone wanted to come and murder them while they slept way out here, there would be worse ways to go. Locking that door somehow felt wrong, even the owners had mentioned that they had keys but they couldn't remember the last time the keys had been used. They followed the winding little path toward the cliff and wandered along it, overlooking the shore below. The path would take them down a steep, rocky slope for a bit and pop out at a crude little staircase, weather worn, crumbling wood and bits of rope that seemed to cling to the sun bleached rocks all the way to the sand. The first time Aaron had put his foot on the stairs, he felt a falling sensation erupt inside of him, shaking him to his core, his anxiety almost paralyzing him there but he pushed through it and realized that as shaky as the stairs seemed to be, they weren't going anywhere. He trusted them now. They weren't unlike his own body – once a gleaming specimen carved out of necessity with blood, sweat and tears, now crumbling, ragged, protective layers stripped away to bare bones but still standing, still strong. The wood splintered and the ropes frayed, and the two men felt their footsteps light, respectful, making their way down until the soft give of the sand was beneath their shoes. The waves crashed gray and frothy against the rocks, washing up the peppery sand and they both sucked in the briny air at the same time. Aaron felt the salt in his lungs first, stinging his throat but filling him with life. Dave, at once, decided to plop down on a rock and just stare out at the sun casting its last pools of golds and pinks out over the water. Aaron stood beside him, put his hand on his shoulder to steady himself, and closed his eyes, feeling the wind whipping him in the face. Neither of them had thought of work in days, those haunting images of mutilated bodies and evil men had no place here. 

“I could live here,” Aaron sighed, his bones creaking now as he sat himself beside Dave, settling into the soft sand. “Alone.” Dave nodded. He knew. 

“I'd miss you,” he said with a grin. He loved to visit places like this, to hide away somewhere quiet when the words started to take up too much space and he needed to spill them onto paper, but he couldn't live here. He craved people, talking, gatherings. Solitude was a tool he used, not a life. For Aaron though, this was not just a life, it was the only life he wanted. The idea that he wouldn't get it if the two of them stayed together filled Dave with conflict and grief. He couldn't live this way, but Aaron deserved to. The man had spent the better part of his life in the business of trying to please everyone around him at great personal cost. If he wasn't careful, he'd become Gideon, desperately idolizing solitude with no capacity to live in it, always seeing monsters in the shadows. 

“Come visit,” Aaron said, swallowing hard against the sandpaper in his throat. He knew it too. If he was ever going to get the life he so desired, his days with Dave were numbered. When he was younger that thought would have terrified him, but he was just sad now. He didn't bother with thinking about forever anymore, though, it was too painful when forever turned out to be so very little time. He thought about today, and if he was feeling particularly adventurous, he'd entertain some thoughts about tomorrow or maybe next week, but never forever. He leaned against Dave, rested his head on the other man's thigh and pushed his scarf up over his nose and mouth. 

“Not yet,” Dave said softly, looking down at Aaron now instead of at the waning sunset, watching the way the wind swirled through his already wild hair. He rested his hand there, fingers dancing through the wild black bed head, brushing against his temples, feeling the soft pulse there. “Please. I need more time.” 

“We should head back,” Aaron said, his ragged voice muffled by his wool scarf. Dave's last words hung in the air between them a moment longer before they stood, followed their path back up the cliff slowly, every so often Dave's hand reaching out to help keep his sick partner steady on his feet. At the top, their feet found the soft dirt of the path and their hands met, tangled together, stayed that way until they reached the front door. They stood there a moment, face to face now, and Dave's eyes glittered in the last dredges of twilight. 

“Don't be stupid,” Aaron muttered with a sly grin, knowing that Dave was moved to the point that he wanted nothing more than to kiss his partner there as the stars started showing their faces in the sky. Kiss him until he said he'd stay, give him more time, tell him he wasn't leaving yet. Kiss him until he promised. He wouldn't promise, because promises in his experience ultimately became lies. Instead he just smiled, held tight to Dave's hand, and pulled him into the house where they could light their fire and he could read the words that had swirled in his lover's head earlier that day. Dave built the fire while Aaron got back into his pajamas and grabbed his blanket, the uniform of the sick and feverish, and set another kettle of water onto the stove top. 

With two steaming mugs of tea, they sat beside the crackling fire and Aaron, with his thin voice fading in and out, painfully low and scratched like an old record, read the words on the page and Dave's fingers clacked noisily at the typewriter in front of him. 

“How do you make serial killers sound sexy?” Aaron asked, reaching the bottom of the page, and Dave laughed. 

“It's a gift,” he replied, pulling the page out of the typewriter and admiring it. Aaron pulled his knees to his chest and leaned heavily against Dave, his head on his shoulder, eyes drifting shut. The tea had warmed him inside, the fire outside. He thought about living here, curling up on this couch alone in front a fire he'd built by himself, putting the kettle on for one instead of two and he figured he wasn't really ready for it yet either. He'd wait a little longer, Dave's presence beside him was still worth more to him than solitude. Softly he fell off to sleep, and Dave sat for hours, in the silence until the fire died down and he felt Aaron shiver against him. He eased his way out from under his partner and tucked his blanket tight around him before settling down in front of the fire to build it back up, get it spitting hot, and head up to bed. He'd let Aaron sleep there on the couch beside a roaring fire that would keep him warm, hoping that he'd make his way upstairs sometime in the night for the heat that could only be provided by another person lying beside him. He left the light on at the top of the stairs, just in case.


End file.
